Intermittent catheters are typically used by patients suffering from urinary incontinence or by individuals unable to have voluntary urination. In our highly mobile culture, the ability to have the freedom to leave home for the day or longer is an important part of life. To accommodate this need single use catheters have been developed to allow patients to perform self catheterization. To aid in the insertion of the catheter in a body cavity they are often lubricated making the handling of the catheter difficult and messy. Many catheter packages are now designed to aid in the use of the catheter and at least the funnel end of the catheter is retained in the package. This allows the user to use the package to manipulate the catheter and avoid the messy and possible insanitary handling of the actual catheter. Manipulating a slippery catheter through a plastic bag can be quite difficult even for someone with excellent dexterity. To aid in the manipulation of the catheter various devices have been conceived to limit or control the movement of the catheter into and out of its package.
Many of these movement control devices have multiple parts increasing cost, weight, and waste of the overall catheter and packaging.
Therefore, a need exists for a low cost, lightweight, and low waste catheter movement control device.